Dr. Peter Breggin, Mental Health Reform and Covid |547|
Peter Breggin is a psychiatrist with a distinguished career in mental health reform and patient advocacy.
[box]
Listen Now:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
[/box]Subscribe:
[one_third][/one_third] [one_third]
[/one_third] [one_third_last]
[/one_third_last]
Click here for Dr. Peter Berggin’s website
Book: COVID-19 and the Global Predators
Click here for forum Discussion
Alex Tsakiris: On this episode of Skeptiko a show about mental health reform and COVID, and ultimately a show about evil. I have an interview coming up in a minute with Dr. Peter Breggan psychiatrist and, uh, someone who really has well an unparalleled career in terms of mental health reform. You’ll hear all about that, but what you’ll also hear, and what I found particularly interesting from this kind of skeptical perspective we have is he says that the biggest obstacle that he faced.
In just convincing people in his community, you know, psychotherapists that what he was finding in the mental health field, in terms of, uh, corruption and deception and completely immoral stuff that was going on. The biggest problem in convincing people that was true is that just didn’t want to accept evil.
They didn’t want to accept, accept the idea that, you know, people were doing really, really bad things on an individual level. And at an institutional level. So the reason I say it’s kind of a skeptical thing is it does seem like we’ve run into that again and again on this show, we’re really smart people.
People you wouldn’t expect to be blind. What we all understand is that there’s just some people that are really messed up and that maybe they’re messed up at a level beyond this biological robot level, which we’ll get into in a minute. And I was like these movie clips, I think it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting.
What, how we’ve understood. From that kind of cultural perspective. So I have one for you today from a backdraft, the movie from 20 years ago with some really amazing actors. And here is, uh, Donald Sutherland playing the psychopathic arsonist in front of the parole board until our buddies.
Robert DeNiro. Here’s a clip.
[00:02:13] Clip: . The parole board has received Mr. Bartell’s fitness report, endorsement from his section warden, Dr. Norris, uh, supervising psychiatrist. I would describe Mr. Bartell’s progress as remarkable
mr. Bartell, do you regret your crimes? Yes.
And then aware of the pain that I have caused excuse me. Excuse me. Remember this Ronald remind me who it belong to. What did you do to that little girl?
Ronald? What’d he do at all ladies.And what about the world? What would you like to do in the whole world? Bring it all.
[00:03:10] Alex Tsakiris: So, of course it’s Hollywood dramatic and this one, especially dramatic of that, of that era. But you got to wonder if the kind of, you know, wacky dogmatic, scientism, you are just your brain. So the psychiatrists and the parole board, like I’ve looked at my numbers, I’ve done my tests. You know, you, you gotta be all right.
You can’t really be evil. You gotta wonder, I gotta wonder. If that’s not at the root cause a lot of this stuff we see, here’s a clip from the upcoming interview with Dr. Peter Bregman.
[00:03:56] Dr. Peter Breggin: , you mentioned very earlier consciousness and that the people we’re dealing with who are managing public health , they actually don’t believe in consciousness. They don’t believe people have free will. They don’t believe that that there is such a thing as love.
They actually think we’re objects. The people who want to drug all our children and the same people who want to vaccinate all our children, they don’t really think then of the children as beings, as spiritual creatures, as a people with a need and a desire to live and to be themselves to grow up and explore the world and, everything done under COVID-19 has been to destroy that cover our faces with mass. So we can’t relate to each other. We can’t care about each other. The whole works is about destroying human connection.
[00:04:48] Alex Tsakiris: Bragging is great. He’s a giant, we stand on the shoulders of people like this. Stick around my interview with Dr. Peter Breggan is coming up here on skeptical.
(===) Welcome to skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Charisse. And today we welcome Dr. Peter Breggin to skeptical. here to talk about his new book COVID-19 and the global predators.
Breggan is a trained medical doctor, psychiatrist, long time practicing psychotherapist. And he has had just a truly remarkable career, really unsurpassed career as a reformer in the mental health field. I bring that up mainly because I think it’s super relevant to everything we’re going to talk about today and about his book, , so when I say that, let me put that into context. This guy, Dr. Breggan is battle-tested in a way few other people are like when they were still doing Labatt homies on people, which isn’t that long ago, if you read this guy’s history, like 1970s, was one of the few people to stand up and go, no, this is not right.
This is morally wrong. In addition to being ethically wrong, he stood up. He stood up to, electroshock therapy, which unfortunately isn’t completely banned, but somebody who stood up, stood up to giving very dangerous psychiatric drugs to children. He stood up for that for decades.
What that’s brought to him in his life in terms of even death threats, believe it or not, but battles and. Being shunned by a lot of people in his community, all that he has fought against because he felt that it was the right thing to do. It was the morally right thing to do.
And isn’t that the kind of guy we need to fight this battle, I think that’s what we need. So that’s why I was super excited Dr. Breggan agreed to come on and join me on skeptical. So I’m so glad you’re here.
Thanks so much for joining me.
[00:07:19] Dr. Peter Breggin: Thank you for the very nice introduction. I really deeply appreciate it. And for mentioning the book, it is surprising that no one else’s has written a book that looks at the deep dive of, um, just who is behind all of the COVID-19, uh, stuff. You mentioned Robert F Kennedy’s excellent book on the real Anthony Fowchee.
he was very generous in and saying that this book, that our book the one, oh, there, my goodness. You’re on top of things.
Um,
[00:07:54] Alex Tsakiris: Here’s what he wrote. No other books. So comprehensively covers the details of COVID-19 criminal conduct. That’s pretty direct as well as its origins in a network of global predators, seeking wealth and power at the expense of human freedom and prosperity.
Wow. Uh, I think, I think that’s, uh, a powerful, powerful statement and I think it’s true in terms of what your book is all about.
[00:08:24] Dr. Peter Breggin: Yeah, there was something in us, humans that it’s very hard for us to accept people in power are actually planning their own increase in power and wealth, without any regard for our wellbeing whatsoever. They’re just interested in the PR image they create as they, um, basically exploit to the rest of humanity.
This is a really hard, hard concept for people to accept. We, you know, as children we want. I believe our parents are, are well-meaning of course. And they’re not always, the parents are not always well-meaning, but we hope they are. And there are a lot more well-meaning uh, Because they’re tied to us by affection, by love, by parental responsibility.
But as we go further up the line of authority and grow up and we start thinking about what is bill gates doing? What is cloud Schwab doing? What’s Michael Bloomberg doing? These are people who organize international conferences of powerful people. Uh, what is Ted DROS doing at the world health organization?
Um, what is usually paying doing in China? Because he plays a very big role in a lot of what’s happening to us through his connections to, uh, uh, bill gates is very strong. Chinese communist leaders, very strong connections to bill gates, bill gates thinks so, and is working with them. Um, and it’s hard for us to imagine that these people don’t have a lot of consideration, um, for us, uh, There’s a rarely, we get a glimpse into it.
There’s a fellow named Harari who is a very close associate of Klaus Schwab, who is the creator of, uh, much of the, um, much of this, uh, super order above states by works with all the, the top businesses in the world and the top engineers in the world, deciding among themselves have to run things without regard for human rights, without regard to government sovereignty.
And he talks about the dispense ability of human beings. But most of them don’t just openly let us know what they’re thinking.
[00:10:45] Alex Tsakiris: You know, that’s an interesting point. And, uh, one of the things I want to try and not do is get lost in all the names and all the power, elite kind of things, because what I think you really bring throughout your career, if somebody really traces what you’ve been about, you know, your battle for mental health reform is really a battle about.
How we understand our human consciousness, how we understand our humanness, how we understand sovereignty that goes with consciousness. I thought I’d play a little clip from a YouTube that you did that in a way isn’t related in an another way related. And this is a series you did on psychiatry psychotherapy, just to help people understand some of the basics.
Let me play this for folks, and then let’s chat about it for a minute.
(=======)
[00:11:41] Dr. Peter Breggin: I’m Peter R Breggin MD and I am a psychiatrist let me say that I’ve been doing, psychotherapy since 1968. And during this entire time I’ve never had a suicide in my practice. I think some of it is luck. But I think another big reason is, is that I never give psychiatric drugs to people for their problems.
I don’t start people on drugs. So if you’ll come to me feeling suicidal, I don’t give you a drug. Why would I give you an anti-depressant? When it’s got a big box warning on it, that uptake 24, you even see an increased suicide rate on antidepressants and controlled clinical trials.
And depression. What happens is, is a total loss of hope. So what’s the answer to depression from the viewpoint of a therapist? Well, the most important thing is to be hopeful. And that’s your average psychiatrist look hopeful, go to an American psychiatric association meeting. because people who give drugs and diagnose people, they become unhappy people. They’re not hopeful people.
(======)
[00:12:50] Alex Tsakiris: Oh, it’s, it’s great. , tell us about some of the points that you’re trying to make there, what you’re trying to get across and how that fits into your long career in trying to help people inside of this model.
That seems to be in a way. Is echoed in your latest book in a system that seems to try to be pull people down in a way.
[00:13:15] Dr. Peter Breggin: Yeah. Well, you mentioned very earlier consciousness and that the people we’re dealing with who are managing public health and trying to, you know, control what we’re doing here in America, they actually don’t believe in consciousness. They don’t believe people have free will. They don’t believe that that there is such a thing as love.
They want to crush religion and want to crush a belief in God. They want to crush even, uh, The idea that we have personal freedom, all of which is relevant to psychotherapy. I mean, what, what do we bring to psychotherapy? Um, if we don’t bring the spiritual aspects to it, um, but they are devoid. They literally are devoid of a concept of it.
It’s, you know, I was thinking last night with ginger and this really picked her up. I said, it’s like, they’re all functioning, but then we’re testing. They actually think we’re objects. Or the old initial definition of what tourism, which is still the best is that that’s a person who probably for developmental reasons and their relationships with family, doesn’t develop a concept that there are actual people who are caring and who love us, and we can relate to them.
And they’re very different than objects and machines. Uh, but the people who want to drug all our children and the same people who want to vaccinate all our children, they don’t really think then of the children as beings, as spiritual creatures, as a people with a need and a desire to live and to be themselves to grow up and explore the world and, and, and find some comfort in basic spiritual concepts.
Like there’s a loving God or that the world has a, a spiritual force within it. So it’s a, it’s a world devoid of. All of the things that most of us who are thoughtful believe are important, particularly the idea of love that we should love one another. And that failures of relationship, which is what I was talking about in the, in the video, ultimately that depression, sadness, uh, Missouri, um, the worst psychosis, all of it is as about a loss of trust, faith connection with other human beings.
Um, and or with any concept of God, or of a good spirituality in the universe to which we can connect. And once people can connect with them, Um, with a hopeful therapist, with a caring therapist or another human being a minister, a priest, a friend, a family member. If that connection can be restored to just one other human being, then we have strengths.
And then we, we begin to get our vitality back. What the book is pointing out is that everything done under COVID-19 has been to destroy that cover our faces with mass. So we can’t relate to each other. We can’t care about each other. The whole works is about destroying human connection.
[00:16:26] Alex Tsakiris: I think very early on in the book you mentioned, I thought from a medical perspective, something that I didn’t know, but you said it’s well understood that the way that we deal with a pandemic is. Kind of cooperation of hope, uh, moving forward. And then when we contrast that with the way that they’ve handled the plan, DEMEC, it’s been exactly the opposite of that, which makes you wonder, why was it about fear?
Just ramping up the fear from the beginning. Why was it about isolation? Why was it about all these other things? So that’s why I really appreciate that you’re approaching this from perspective and I don’t, I’m not a religious person, but I think that fundamental to this isn’t understanding that.
We are more, we are more than biological robots and that’s what you’ve been really essentially battling with your whole life in terms of, so like in this video, I just play one of the things I thought was just so beautiful, but in a subtle way, you said, I embrace someone who comes to me, is. ’cause they shows that they have feeling, they have passion.
They have a vision for how their life could be. What disturbs me you’re saying is when someone comes in, they’re devoid of feelings. They don’t have any feelings. And then when we play that back into the situation that we’re in, and we look into those gates and eyes and we go, oh my God, I feel for this person, he’s someone who, who has somehow lost his soul.
He doesn’t, in some way, he doesn’t have feelings. We can just, we just see it in these people. And so many of these people. And I wonder if we don’t have to start being more honest about talking about it at that level, if that isn’t really the root cause of it. I think your work tells us your whole career tells us that that is what it’s really all about.
[00:18:24] Dr. Peter Breggin: Well, that’s very interesting and exciting. I, uh, because you’re actually giving me a reorientation to really what the fundamentals are because they want us to completely lose track of that. Um, and they don’t not believe in it. They don’t think good exists. They don’t have a personal experience of what you and I are talking about now.
Sounds to them like jibberish the, um, interesting thing that I’ve found, I’m Jewish and my wife is Christian. Um, we very much believe in a, uh, in a loving God. Um, but neither of us is. Uh, deeply involved in religion per se, we’re involved in and the spiritual level of how God presents to us. And, um, almost everybody who is risking their careers and their lives in this movement.
And vast majority, not everybody, but almost everybody we meet are, are Christians. And they’re very sincere American Christians. They they’re generous, they’re caring. They believe that Jesus was right. When, when he talked about, we should love one another and love God. They, uh, They know that what they’re doing is something they have to do on a spiritual level.
And this has been very striking to us. We’ve never been in that group before. Cause when I was a, um, my whole life really working on the psychiatric issues, it was mostly with people who, um, don’t share a lot of spirituality. They will, most of them were hurt by psychiatry and psychology precisely because they didn’t have a good grasp of this.
And they, they were still struggling with it. Some of them are psychologists and, and therapists. Uh, but most of them were not committed to a life of doing what they thought, uh, God or goodness or rightness expected of them. And, um, this is a. This marks, um, these people, as the opposite of those who were trying to control us, do us keep us from thinking we, we have an individuality that matters.
Um, and to those of you out there who are feeling apathetic and down, I, we got an interesting call from a friend of ours, too. So closely fits with his house. It was about the apathy. She said, you know, I’m seeing these young people. And, um, there, they just have apathy about life. Now, young adults, they don’t have enthusiasm, they don’t have excitement.
And that is, uh, precisely what they want from us. They want us to be as, as some people call it sheeple, not people, but sheep, sheep. And, uh, we have to know that and say, no, we’re going to have energy. We’re going to have life. We’re going to love each other. We’re going to band together. We’re going to stand up for freedom and for basic spiritual quality and nature of human beings.
[00:21:34] Alex Tsakiris: Dr. Bergen. I wonder since you do have this long history in working with people, and one of the things you said in that video that we didn’t get to that I think is quite impressive is you’ve spent your whole life. In, in therapy with people, working with people, having people come in and talk to them and comfort
[00:21:53] Dr. Peter Breggin: Okay.
[00:21:54] Alex Tsakiris: and be a part of their life, bring in their family.
You’re a people helper on that kind of personal level, empathetic level, but I’m sure you’ve also run into people in your practice who have these issues with control, have these issues with dominance, do you understand them from that deeper level of having worked with so many thousands and thousands of people through the years? Well, what’s going on with them.
[00:22:23] Dr. Peter Breggin: Well, I think to some extent is beyond our understanding. I mean, I, I just want to start with that. I think evil. Uh, bad intention is beyond our understanding to a great extent. I think it’s almost another world phenomena. Um, it, isn’t just simply a matter of there being badly injured in childhood. It is not just simply a matter of that.
I have worked with, uh, some of the most injured people imaginable and who as little children while they were being abused or tortured as 2, 3, 4 year olds. I mean, literally that said to themselves, I will never be this way when I grow up. And so I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s reduceable to, um, Uh, w just the, you know, let’s feel sorry for folks who are, who are violent.
I think they’d make wrong decisions early on, and I can’t explain it. So in that sense, it’s unknowable. uh, second thing is, um, I mostly see these people in my medical work. I’ve been involved in over a hundred trials, uh, often involving people who’ve committed violent crimes while under the influence of drugs, but also against the drug companies over it of things.
And that that’s mostly where I get to see these people. And it’s hard to, it’s hard to have people open up when you’re, you’re kind of trying to help them not be in trouble with the law, but I’ll give you an ex a few simple examples, um, of how I deal with. How I try to help people with it. One example, I’ve never put this quite together will be a, say a five-year-old and another say a 50 year old.
So a five five-year-old boy comes into me. He’s brought in by his mother and his father. Uh, I do not try to see five-year-olds alone. I want to help them mother and father and big sister or brother helped them. Um, I believe that that whenever a person’s young, if you can help change the family around them, that does help them mutually.
And the little boy comes in and the parents say, and, uh, yesterday he hit his little sister and, um, I approach him as like a being, you know, person. And I say, come on over here. Um, sit on the stool and meet. Let me tell you something. I said, I said, you know, uh, tell you one of the secrets for your life. And this is five-year-old.
When you go up, your sister could be your best and most thorough friend. There’s nothing that a young girl and a woman appreciates more than a big brother. Who’s there to back them up because men have a special strength for women, and you must use that strength to protect your sister. Let me see your muscles, your muscles.
I hold one of his muscles to listen. You don’t use that to hit your little sister. You use to protect. And, and you’ll just find that you grow up with the best automatic best friend by being a good big brother. And, um, children will change almost overnight when they get providing, they don’t then see their parents fighting or their dad hits them or something else, completely reverses the process, which then has to be worked with, and they give you now go to an example of a 50 year old, say in therapy, come in.
And usually these people do not volunteer to come to therapy. So you don’t get to see them as the primary patient. The people who come to therapy are the people who are trying really hard to do good and to be the right, not to, not to put their pain on others. My definition of evil, the best one I have is it’s inflicting your own pain on somebody else.
These are. People who, who are like that don’t generally come much for therapy, but they bring in their husband. So they’re sitting together and the wife is saying something and I see the husband’s right here in Twitch. And I see her quiet down and I look at him. I say, you hit your wife. And I, I don’t deal with rage.
I deal with like, whoa, that’s other worldly. And it seems like that to me, a man would hit his own, hit a woman doing that sex. Where’s that from? Um, and at first he’ll deny it and she’ll say, and she’ll try to interrupt. I see. No, no, no. I really want to be honest here. um, did you show lifeless night as I would?
This is about, I know, remember gave you get something like that and I I’ll sit, I’ll put it to the man. I’ll say, look, first of all, you have to stop today. Um, I hope your wife will report you to the police the next time you ever hit her again. And, um, I think that you need to decide to give it up that’s really good news.
So I’m giving you in order, that’s really the best one you’ve ever had. Always do something other than her choice when you’re mad at her and I’m going to teach you something else, which is the great news. If you stop that and become a tender, loving giant, kind of get more affection than you ever knew was possible on the face of the earth.
Because I can tell you wouldn’t be hitting your wife. If you had a loving mom and then we’ll get to that later. Believe me, it’s true. And we did feel had a really loving mom taking care of you for the first 18 years of your life. You’re not going to hit women God’s sakes. I mean, unless your father was sitting here, my father had my mother.
Yeah. You love your mother. Yeah. Okay. Well, let’s get pissed being dead then. And let’s, let’s love your wife and I’ll talk to him about the value of it and the importance, but the absolute moral forbiddenness of hitting. it’s, it is surprising that people will listen to this, but they are people who at least are accompanying their wife does, you know, so it’s a very special circumstance and it depends more on these people who come than, than a magic with the therapist, but you at least have to identify these people spiritually and matter how young they are.
And, uh, and talk to them directly about, about what they’re doing and the right and wrong a bit and what they can expect if they become like. Because if you’re five or 50, if you become more loving, if you can get more of that, I will become more source of love. The shining light of love. The more you do that, the more that you will have happiness around you and the more you’ll help people.
And if you’re going to spend your. And this word battling is scent battling and we’ve so certainly I’ve done. You don’t want to be angry and you don’t want to be really bad new. You, you, you want to be there to speak what you are certain is the truth about how people need to relate to each other. But the folks like Fowchee and I do name names because I want people to know I’m actually going to draw the full picture for them.
There are people out there who are not loving, don’t have the faintest idea what it’s about, and if they are loving to their wife or children, they’ve cut themselves off from the people that they control and torment.
[00:29:57] Alex Tsakiris: That’s quite beautiful and profound. I think I’m going to listen to that is like, gosh, I’ll have to talk to this guy when I have trouble, because it’s so beautiful and it’s so, so artistic almost in the way that you manage those situations. Let’s extend that one step further because you set a couple things in there that again, I think, and I think you’re admitting that you think this too, even though you don’t , talk about it very much is really central at the core of this very, very important book that we’re talking about today. COVID-19 the global predators. It is as we read the quote from John F. Kennedy Jr. And there’s many other blurbs that you’ll see on here. Just fantastic. It’s
[00:30:44] Dr. Peter Breggin: There’s ginger that that’s my wife, ginger passing by co-author of my life and the book.
[00:30:52] Alex Tsakiris: The book has been very successful, very well received have a hundred thousand copies that you’ve sold basically without any, any promotion. It’s not like, uh, anyone in the mainstream is reviewing this book, even though
[00:31:06] Dr. Peter Breggin: No,
[00:31:06] Alex Tsakiris: be.
[00:31:07] Dr. Peter Breggin: no.
[00:31:08] Alex Tsakiris: your effort on its own. But what I was getting to that I want to try and close the loop on is you said a couple of interesting things. One in that ultimately it’s hard for you to understand evil. In purely in this realm, in this material realm and this gee, I gotta make more money. G I want to get ahead.
We certainly understand that that’s part of it, but there does seem to be and other worldly part of that. And I don’t know, I can’t put my hands on. I don’t know what it is. I’m again, I’m not religious. I don’t have that orientation, but it does seem to extend beyond that from your experience, what is that?
All about, you said that you can’t really those people. You don’t reach those people, those people don’t come in. What is that all about? And then if you can extend that one step further, because when you move into the domain of dealing with institutions like you’ve done, uh, uh, medical institutions, corporations, uh, where the evil gets concentrated.
And that’s what this book is about global predators. So how do you, as a therapist who has a pretty good handle on human nature, how do you understand that evil and then how that evil becomes institutionalized? What do we think is going on there? What’s your best guess?
[00:32:30] Dr. Peter Breggin: well, this is very interesting by the way, very few people interview me, raise these kinds of issues. So this is actually kind of a little exploratory for me to your audience should know how rare it is to, to be interviewed by somebody who wants to talk on this particular level. Um, And I think it is the, I mean, ultimately it is the level that things are about.
I think from just a simple evolutionary viewpoint, um,
we developed over several million years from being little bipeds and trees clinging together, uh, while, uh, the tigers, you know, wandered below maybe, and we threw coconuts out and occasionally, if they tried to climb the tree, we’ve evolved in essentially that model of a close knit, extended family. It is not until I’m very mirrored 10,000 years ago.
I’m beginning to think it’s a little longer than that, but 10 is that usually what anthropologists archeologists. And so on. Say 10,000 years ago, we did not live in large groups. In the moment we begin to live in large groups and small cities, which happens rather rapidly around eight or 9,000 years ago, very short time ago.
Uh, we, we are already building walls. Cities were already having signs of warfare, outright warfare. And even earlier than that, but it doesn’t go back a lot more. We do. It’s just hard to track. We don’t find mass murders, uh, before living in cities and states, except on rare occasions is some evidence that hunter-gatherers might attack another band and, and, uh, bash their heads in and things like that.
So, but it’s hard to dig all that literally up out of the earth and figure it out. I think we were essentially meant to be in small groups. I don’t think there’s any question about it. And the larger our group gets, the more divorced we get from. The rest of the people around us. And yet we’re in very close proximity to them.
And I think it also tends to fracture our relationships with each other, because you’re not just dealing all day long with your parents, your grandparents, your mother’s best friend or whoever else is in this group. The dealing with teachers you’re dealing with police, you’re dealing with the school counselors and nowadays you may be getting the worst garbage in the world being dumped on you in school as a kindergartener and on up, I think we just get more divorced from people.
And that basic concept of a mother and child of whoever is the primary caretaker in child, looking in the eyes that touching that, being like a oneness of being made of each other, that is the reality of early life. We’re literally made of each other with mother’s milk. Preferably the food brought to us by our parents, by our brain grows in response to our parents and our nurtures brain doubles in size and the first year.
And it’s all about socialization that somehow all that stuff, um, doesn’t make it for many, many people. And then the higher up they get an, any organization. Um, the more remote they are and also who gets higher up in an organization. Um,
Often, pretty good people do build organizations. You read about, I suspect the Walton family and us senior warms were really good people, but that’s not who runs their billions of dollars anymore. It’s a CEO that runs run it. It’s people who got to the top. They didn’t make what they built. They got to the top and people who get to the top, get there because of particular qualities.
And it is not generally love. I mean, the story of Jesus is that, uh, you know, if you, if you really, you know, gave a lot of attention, bringing love into the world, they crucify you. It’s, uh, it’s real. Whether it’s a metaphor or actually happened, uh, certainly Jesus happened and the sayings of, of him recording various ways by various people.
Um, Those are not the people that get to the top. It’s, it’s a bunch of spiral. If it gets to the top, it’s the Pharisees who get to the top. So I think that, that, there’s just a lot of different things that go into being the alienation of people in power. And, uh, I mean, it’s just a reality. I mean, and it hasn’t, I wanted just one, it has not gotten better.
It’s gotten worse. So as we’ve gotten more power, more communication ability, um, the Chinese communist starting with Mao have killed above the a hundred million Chinese. So their own people, Hitler didn’t just kill Jews and gypsies and homosexuals. He killed lots of Germans and he killed at least 20 or 30 million people outside of the battlefield.
Stalin was very fond of murdering people, intentionally killing people up to maybe 50 million of his own people. So there’s this lies inside human beings. There
[00:38:20] Alex Tsakiris: You know, but the other thing that lies inside of human beings and we’ve touched on it is hope is this desire to connect? You know, I was reading an interview. You gave, have so many really amazing books that you’ve read that there are so many amazing books that you’ve written. And I think people who are interested in any of these topics we’re talking about and any of these topics in terms of mental health reform over the years, if we’ve perked your interest at all, please go and read these books.
But one was an excerpt from a book and it was early on. And I wonder if you could tell this story, as I recall, you were early in your career, you went to a mental health hospital in New York, and you’re a very young man. And you were had that vigor, that desire to do good. And what you saw was just deplorable.
I mean, it was just inhuman at a level that’s hard to comprehend, but at the same time, I wonder what made it made you see hope in that situation, because that is a hope that as you described, it sounded like a hopeless situation. a lot of people feel about the situation we’re in now and the great reset and these forces that seem insurmountable.
How could we ever do anything? How could we ever be anything other than apathetic, but you weren’t apathetic. You were face to face with this and you weren’t empathetic and you move forward. Tell, can you tell that story and tell what was going on inside of you?
[00:39:51] Dr. Peter Breggin: Yeah, I know also, um, let’s also talk about the, more about the people who are taking on these issues now, because there are millions of us and, uh, And I want to encourage people to get involved because a part of what spirituality I think is, is to get involved in the best possible ways with other human beings.
I’m not a monk. By the way, the, um, the book that has captured the most of the hearts of people from the earlier writings is toxic psychiatry and it’s still available. It’s sold hundreds of thousands of books, um, and did, uh, The subtitle of toxic psychiatry.
And I don’t even think I can repeat, but it’s about, , how, , the biochemical theories and the electroshock and a brain surgery psychosurgery of, uh, the psychiatrist to be replaced with love and relationship here. It is
[00:40:50] Alex Tsakiris: psychiatry. Why therapy, empathy, has become a whole movement inside of your practice. Empathy and love must replace the drugs, electroshock and biochemical theories of new psychiatry. And if I can, I want to add one other quote that I found that just struck me.
So, uh, I don’t want to get too people think I’m just a big fan boy, but brilliant. You write. What’s wrong with treating emotional crises, the way we treat medical emergencies. As if that isn’t an obvious answer, should we transform ourselves in the process of trying to help other people? How can we fine tune ourselves to the feelings of others?
that relates, I think, to this empathy thing that you’re tapped into. So I’m sorry though. Please continue.
[00:41:45] Dr. Peter Breggin: Well, it’s good. It’s good.
Okay.
The, uh, I was a freshman at Harvard. It wasn’t New York, it was Massachusetts. And I was a freshman at Harvard and a friend invited me out to the state mental hospital, a local state mental hospital to volunteer. He and his older brother were both at Harvard and they had started this program and I eventually ended up leaving the program for about a year and a half.
And that’s how I got. From being a potential professor, I was in, um, special American history and literature program at Harvard that was like, you know, grooming to be a professor of history of literature may be a lawyer. I wasn’t sure I loved psychology, but I had no interest in going into medicine. And, um, when I walked into the state mental hospital, I was immediately struck with my uncle Duchess descriptions of liberating and Nazi extermination camp.
And also I was struck by my feelings as a 10 year old in a movie theater watching a movie tone, newsreel that my parents and I did not expect to say about the extermination of the Jews. It was the, when some of the first films that came out of heaps of Jews lying dead and others hanging onto the barbed wire, barely having enough strength to hold themselves up and stuff.
And, um, I knew these were. I just know it. I cannot tell you why. See this is to me and explicable. I cannot tell you why exactly at least how I managed to connect and say that, but for the grace of God go, I, and I don’t think I haven’t believed in God. At that point, I was a real, you know, relativistic, uh, kind of a person and everything, which I think some of the best adolescents.
So hopefully it doesn’t go on forever and you find some good values, but, um, it was just clear to me. And, um, the other part of it was, it was clear. These people are in despair and a lot of them, when they saw a young students who were reasonably well-dressed and, and then really looked like they were wanting to help, they just loved us.
Um, in four years of being on the wards, often on my own, eventually as the leader, I managed to get myself a pair of keys. I could go anywhere. I never was threatened on the violent war. Never. And, um, and I, uh, very early on figured that this was not like the playground where you didn’t threaten Peter Reagan.
Cause even though he wasn’t very big, he would do would be just to regret it. It was more like, oh God, these people just need me to be absolutely non-violent. They just need me to be the least spreading human pig on the face of the earth. I don’t know where that came from. I honestly cannot tell you I did not have a religious upbringing, but the only time I heard the word is loved, discussed with serious.
And this was when a Christian girlfriend of mine, Mary, uh, took me to a Methodist church. It was just, well, what is he talking? Um, so I don’t know where it comes from. And I think that a lot of our lives are inexplicably their gifts, their gifts. And I think we should respect them. I think each person should look at their gifts and say, okay, what I’ve been given these gifts, I’m good with people or I’m good with writing or I’m good as a care taker.
I’m as good as a leader. Um, uh, I’m good with ideas, uh, you know, what are your positive gifts and, um, how do you want to bring them into the world? And I guess I didn’t know that at the time, but, um, I had a gift for being with disturbed people and then making them feel comfortable, letting them know it’s not making, letting them feel comfortable.
And we set up a program much against the wishes of the superintendent, but he didn’t want us. Take our program elsewhere. I already visited other state hospitals and they were very interested in our program. And I said, we want like of our students to have their own patients. You know, we had several hundred going through the wars from Harvard and Radcliffe.
And, um, finally they, they gave us each one, one of our own patients. I would be there when we got there on a particular day, we’d go every week. It’s a big commitment and, uh, We had a social worker, a very gentle kind social worker, um, who at least one or two of the staff tried to tell us just was a little cookie or something.
It was very sweet man. And he supervised us was very gentle. And we got these patients who are so bad off that we couldn’t hurt them. That was the theory. We got almost every one on the Malheur hospital. Well, now psychiatri in those days had room for social psychiatry, psychologicals, Patric, psychoanalytic, scotch, no room psychiatry medicine for now because the drug companies have taken over completely.
But then, uh, I got a lot of encouragement for that and I,
[00:46:54] Alex Tsakiris: Well, well, I wonder if you got a lot of encouragement or if you created a lot of encouragement and I’d like you to speak to that. I don’t want to hear a story, but you’re talking about bringing love into the situation, bringing light. I don’t know where that light comes from, but we know that light always shines and it shines through brighter in some people than others, but you brought the light and the light was able to affect the darkness that you found because when you walked in there, it was very, very dark.
As I understand it, I mean,
[00:47:25] Dr. Peter Breggin: very very
[00:47:26] Alex Tsakiris: What they were doing to people was unimaginable. And so I want you to speak to that in terms of, because it, as it relates now, as it relates to your current book, COVID-19 global predators, all that stuff. Isn’t that the solution we got to bring the light because the light has a magic way of transforming the evil.
That’s what your career is all about. Everywhere you go. It’s impossible. That is an impossible situation.
[00:47:53] Dr. Peter Breggin: One of the things that, uh, ginger and I, um, ginger has been with me for 40 years. My, the reform work goes back another 35 to even when I was at whatever the numbers are until I was 18, but we’ve been together 40 years and we’ve been through an enormous amount. And we loved having the reputation of being the conscience of psychiatry, Peter and ginger.
Um, and, but when this came along, we were very nervous about getting into it because we knew how violent we’d been treated by the pharmaceutical industry. And they were kind of the cutting edge of this COVID-19 oppression. They’re not the essence of it. It’s way beyond them. It’s in the it’s in the people invest in these companies.
It’s in the people invest in, uh, the UN into a world, a world order, a new world order and who really want to change things and get rid of a lot of things. I never thought I would say two years ago, but it’s, therefore you’ll be convinced if you look at the. The book convinced me the writing of the book. I didn’t want to come to these conclusions, such grim conclusions, but we looked at each other and basically we eventually looked at each other and said, well, look, our gifts are, our gifts are unique.
There’s nobody else here doing this work. All the people we’ve met, who has done a deep dives into drug company fraud, and who has looked at the interrelationships between the FDA and the drug companies, the way I’ve done this in my books, as many of my books, I talk about these in our relationships. And we said, and whatever our gifts, you know, what gifts do we have this?
Um, you know, we, to all to do this, I was I’m 85 going to be 86, 8 for God sakes. I mean, in my, my wife is a bit younger, but, um, we looked at him and we said, well, that’s what we’re supposed to. This is obviously what we’re supposed to do. This is what the gifts are. She laughed. And she said, well, we still at the two of us were brought together to do this reform work in psychiatry.
She said, I think that was prepped for taking on these globalists. Oh God. Yeah. But then , we just kept meeting other bright souls. We no longer felt like the conscience of anything has a movement.
We are just one of the one millions of conscience is, and we’ve met a lot. Hundreds of them personally are written to us are communicated with us. So folks, if you get involved with wanting to do something on some political level, some spiritual level, it could just be in a group in your neighborhood, creating a group for like-minded souls to grow.
It could be a political group. If you’re looking for people who really do think that they’re supposed to use their gifts, get involved in this movement, the book will introduce you enough people. You kind of get to idea about who to, who to check out. And you’re going to find so many people who shine with.
We have never met many couples like us who really built lives together doing a real purposeful lives together. But among these mostly Christian people we’re meeting, there are so many who have these deep spiritual convictions. And, uh, I know many of you and your audience. Uh, we’ll be a little different from that.
And you know, you, you will have a more personal idea of spirituality. Um, you’ll have a kind of a spirituality that, that is, uh, about your comfort and about finding peace and finding good things like that, but also consider what it will be like if you actually meet like-minded people who are concerned about humanity and what’s happening, it’s so amazing to become involved on that level.
But, uh, again, if you take care of yourself spiritually, you’re doing number one, you’re doing the first thing. Cause you want to as much as possible. If you, when you get involved more with the universe, you want to be in a loving mode. I had to give up being the angry young man and my thirties, because I wasn’t going to do the right things and I was going to wear myself out.
So think about how can you bring more love into this world? How can you do it? That’s a really good starting point for your very spiritual and loving audience.
[00:52:19] Alex Tsakiris: It’s interesting what you say, because it kind of turns the paradigm upside down. It’s like, how do we take action? You mentioned earlier on some of the response that you’ve gotten from the book. Again, COVID-19 and the global predators is the name of the book. You can find it at Breggin, B R E G G I n.com where you can order it directly .
[00:52:44] Dr. Peter Breggin: Yeah, it’s a little complicated. You can get it directly in United States at a discount@wearethepray.com ginger set up a special, uh, dedicated book site. We are the prey.com. If you want the ebook, you can get it at Amazon and you can also get the book at Amazon and all the other book dealers around the world, but in the U S at least just for the book itself, not the ebook, you can get it at, we are the product and we made the price of the ebook very low, so that a 2 99 so that people can really buy it, uh, and, and, and feel comfortable just spending a few bucks together.
[00:53:23] Alex Tsakiris: That’s fantastic. , so the book is a starting point. I think that all the stuff we’ve talked about here can be a good lead into the book because the book can be heavy. If you’re not indoctrinated, if you haven’t woken up, as they say to this stuff, I mean, you’re talking to, we’re listening to Dr. Priti, Peter Bragen.
Who’s fought these battles. Who’s had. Who’s had the pharmaceutical companies call him up and threatened him in the middle of the night with death, he found a fo a phony FBI agent came by. And the next thing you know, he finds a gas leak in his house. I mean, this is real at a level that, and if you think any of that doesn’t happen, I mean, just go read other accounts by other people.
These guys are in it to win it in a way that we don’t even want to think about. But if so,
[00:54:17] Dr. Peter Breggin: Yeah.
[00:54:17] Alex Tsakiris: you don’t get too hung up on that. Think about what he’s saying now about what if this is an opportunity to understand why you shouldn’t be apathetic to understand how and why you could connect what could happen on the horizon of your life.
If you, if you get to the other end of this, what if this is? What if the great reset is, be turned into a positive, great reset, a great reset of love and connection community. that’s what I hear you saying.
[00:54:53] Dr. Peter Breggin: Well, I love what you’re saying. And it’s an emphasis, uh, that I haven’t had this sort of show strongly on any of the shows I’ve been doing. So very good, very good for getting to the heart oppnet um, it is definitely what life is about to me. Life is about bringing love into the world. We, we all are spiritual beings and the essence of that is we can love period and everything else is BS and craziness.
And, um, even in therapy, if you, if you can deal with a person who’s a profoundly disturbed, but they can experience that you are a caring, human being and they get a sense that they could like. They’ll stop hallucinating for 20 minutes while they talk to ya. Then you got a lot of work to do to stop fall back.
They’d been hurt, but it’s about shining love. And that’s what the Judeo-Christian tradition is about. It’s about, there’s a loving God and, um, that’s about that’s from my viewpoint. That’s what it’s about. Do you want to bring love into the world and, and, and not at, not at that of anger or anxiety or rage in anything you do in your life.
Um, but act out of reason and ethics and the feeling of love. Not easy to do, but it gets easier because it works so well. And, um, it just works really, really well.
[00:56:20] Alex Tsakiris: You know, the last point I wanted to comment on because I really wanted to commend you on this. And that is your treatment of the Trump thing, because I know you were a big supporter of, I think the, the spirit of what a lot of us thought Trump was about was about being our personal best and as a country becoming our best and, and what that reflects and what that taps into.
But I think your willingness to see that. Maybe that was tainted in a way. And you know, for you to acknowledge that, like you do in the preface and say, Hey, now I’m having trouble really squaring what I thought with his actions. And now I have to pull back and I have to change course, because I think that’s another part of this process.
Right? Part of the process is there’s going to be tricky moments where we’re going to have to go, oh, the assumptions I made, maybe they weren’t. Right. But maybe I can still find my direction. Hasn’t been totally thrown off course because that’s what I see you doing saying, Hey, everything I’m saying is still important.
I just need to readjust here based on this information, do you want to speak to that?
[00:57:37] Dr. Peter Breggin: Yeah. Well, fortunately everybody that I know who is fighting for America’s survival and our freedom and who believe in loving ways of relating, I actually supported Trump and probably would still vote for him again, but something dreadful happened along the way. I mean, he got com it was either getting completely taken in and overwhelmed by the deep state and convinced that that actually this was wonderful stuff.
Operation warp speed. It, uh, this was great. And, and so on, uh, you know, give supporting Moderna and Pfizer with billions of dollars and letting them push through, uh, essentially, uh, GMO vaccines, turning us into GMO people, let alone worrying about eating GMO corn vaccines, literally. Making us into GMO organisms.
Um, he either got completely overwhelmed by that, or maybe also he got, he just got the pragmatic in his own mind and decided that if he was against the vaccines, that he couldn’t get reelected, I dunno which it was. But, uh, one of the things that I make so clear in the book is that by supporting America and every country to say you take care of yourselves, By supporting individual freedom.
And by aligning himself against the global predators, he actually fought globalism. Even as he was electioneering, he fought the Koch family, supposedly the great saviors of the Republicans who were supposed to be freedom, loving libertarians. Are they just another, another bunch of global predators? And Trump’s spotted that and said, I don’t care if you don’t give me any money.
Uh, and just typical manner. You may be good, guys. You have good guys. I like you, but I don’t want your money. Um, and he, um, uh, He really got on a terribly wrong track. Um, he hasn’t completed is now common. Modified it somewhat, but not completely. I don’t know if he’s man enough to say I got bamboozled or I made a wrong choice.
I thought I had to do this politically. God, forgive me. So there’s a lot of discussion about what were his motives, but the problem always is you don’t get to, uh, uh, generally speaking to a position of great leadership without somehow being willing to make serious compromises. And, um, that’s a grave misfortune.
I don’t think that we’ve probably had an untainted, largely untainted leadership since the first few presidency in the United States. I mean, George Washington. Yes. He was a perfect man. He had slaves, also the only man who ever freed all his slaves on his wife’s death of all these slaveholders, but, but Washington really didn’t want to take over the nation.
That is so unusual. I mean F when the war was over, he was presented by his troops with a deep, uh, like insistence that he become king they March on, uh, on the car, the continental Congress and tell them they had to get paid and had to be better taken care of. And Washington found out they were having this meeting actually in a church.
And he went there and he put on his glasses, which he never did. He really played to how sad and tired he was. And said, we fought for freedom to survive. Done are these years valley forge all this up, you, and now you want to make me a king. And he didn’t, and they all felt guilty and there was no takeover.
And it is literally the first time in history, the world, which gives you an idea that what happens to leaders. So certainly question where a man who had an army at his best. And could have taken over a country. And most of the people in the country would have been absolutely delighted, probably including the monarchists.
And he said, no, we’re about something new human freedom under God and what he believed. And a very few people I come and Trump is not exactly that
[01:01:56] Alex Tsakiris: You know what I think we keep coming back. In this discussion, this wonderful, wonderful sharing that you’ve done for so many for all of us today the idea that that moral compass that is inside us, that is more than just this sack of meetup. There were more than a biological robot and meaningless universe.
We know it, we knew it from our earliest baby thoughts, but that, that moral compass is always there. And we can follow it. That’s what keeps coming through in
[01:02:27] Dr. Peter Breggin: Yes.
[01:02:28] Alex Tsakiris: And even if you get duped by a politician here or there, don’t look to the politician, look to the ideals behind it because that’s what we love about And it’s okay to say we love America.
[01:02:39] Dr. Peter Breggin: Oh, God bless you for that.
[01:02:41] Alex Tsakiris: We love. We love the ideals. love the life, Liberty and pursuit of happiness that we can always stand on. And, and that’s why I am. very, very pleased that you’re able to make that shift on and able to say, you know, Hey, I’m there like everyone else.
Maybe I went down train a little bit too far with this guy. Screw that. What I’m about is the ideals of life, Liberty pursuit of happiness. And you just come back to that, like your rock as, is what comes through in your, your most recent work. So tell us what is going on now? What is it? You, you do a podcast you’re
[01:03:24] Dr. Peter Breggin: a lot. We’re doing a lot of things. A lot of, yes, we, I think we may be doing too many things. The way to keep track of what we’re doing is to go to breggin.com and get our, uh, Breggin alerts. They sometimes call frequent alerts. So we’re changing it to regular alerts, whichever you see get the alerts and they’re, they’re free.
They go out to about 45,000 people. And the opening rate for them is, um, is like 50%, which is unheard of opening rates for online. Um, uh, things like this are like eight, 10%. So people really like what we’re doing. That’s the best way to find out about us. Um, in addition to our website, America out loud, We my wife and I do columns there.
Once a week, we have a column on America, out loud. It’s a great place. You’ll see. Peter McCullough there use the greatest scientist today of COVID-19. Peter McCullough is regularly there and, um, we are doing on Thursday nights and this is going to be the first time this Thursday. Um, we will be on the air at five o’clock.
Ginger and I together, you want to hear the first show in 40 years, we’ve done together tune in Thursday night at America on, uh, out loud or get the show later on. It gets archived. And, um, we’re a little edgy. We’re a little, not yet working together and yet we are, you’ll get a real good sense of she and I tried to do something we’d never done before, which is partner on the air.
She’s always pushed me on the air and refuse to go with me. Um, and then I have a, a regular TV show, which is you can get on Roku. So it’s real TV and it’s on is a station is Brighty on B R I G H T dot E not dot bright Kian B R I G H T E N E O n.tv. Um, and all w we were taken down off YouTube forty-five minutes after I did my first video on.
45 minutes after I did my first video on the bus for life, take it down. And so we are on Brighty, on.com for our videos. So, and we do my I’m on other regular things. The best way to find me as is get the frequent alerts and the TV show, which I love on, um, which is a live it’s actually live that, uh, um, Wednesdays at the 6:00 PM.
Wednesdays at 6:00 PM. Live on bright. He on that TV,
[01:06:08] Alex Tsakiris: terrific. And we’ll obviously have all those links up there. I wasn’t aware that they’ve made this book available for $2 and 99 cents on Amazon. So there’s absolutely no
[01:06:19] Dr. Peter Breggin: the, the, the ebook, no barrier.
Yeah.
[01:06:23] Alex Tsakiris: no barrier to the basic information. And the basic information is hard to swallow, but it’s, life-changing, it’s, life-changing it opens up a new door and have to, you have to go there.
We want to be keeping their head in the sand. No matter what it is, we can handle it. You can hear us, a guy who’s fought for years and years and he’s handled it. That’s what we’re here to do is bring the light like that. Like our guests, Dr. Peter Bragen brought the light today. Dr. Breggan. Thanks again so much for joining me.
It’s just, it’s just awesome to be in your presence and to hear you so.
[01:07:01] Dr. Peter Breggin: Well, this has been a gift to me, actually. It’s the first time somebody kept bringing me back down to the basic basics. It’s interesting. I’ve given hundreds of interviews. Yours is the one that, that actually kept coming back to the basics that we live by. Um, and, uh, my fortunate little bit on it, cause I always want to tell people about the global predators do, did a great job.
Thank you. You gave me a gift today. Thank you.
(====)
[01:07:25] Alex Tsakiris: Thanks again to Peter Breggin for joining me today on skeptical. The one question I tee up from this interview, it’s kind of a repeat question, but it, it, it always looks different when you talk to somebody new. When you talk to somebody who is really so talent and has such an amazing background as this guy, but it’s the question of either.
And it’s w w would this ability for some people to not to connect, to not see other people as spiritual beings, is that ever, ever, ever under any circumstances, something more than biology, something more than nature or nurture? Is it ever possible that that could be influenced by what I call this extended realm?
You know, a couple of interviews ago, we did the interview with Dean Raden and I was pretty hard on him in a couple respects, but. Yeah, don’t forget that parasite ecology and the PSI experiments do show that there is more right. So even if you take like the simple pre sentiment experiment, you know, the one where they show the image on the screen and before the image is even selected by the computer, your body reacts.
Well, that says there’s more that says the class. Isn’t in play. Like we think it is in materialistic epiphenomena minded, wills, brain stuff. It really falsifies that, but people aren’t willing to make and you don’t have to, but you know, people aren’t willing to make that theoretical leap to saying. Is that, does that open the door for maybe evil being more, maybe good.
Being more, maybe Liping more, I think it’s rather obvious. I think it’s rather self evident, but obviously not everybody sees it that way. What’s your opinion. Let me know. And I do have a lot more coming up on skip to co so stay with me for all of that until next time. Take care. Bye for now. (music: Tomie’s Bubbles Candlegravity).
More From Skeptiko
AI Ethics is About Truth… Or Maybe Not |638|
Ben Byford, Machine Ethics Podcast Another week in AI and more droning on about how..Nathan Labenz from the Cognitive Revolution podcast |637|
AI Ethics may be unsustainable -=-=-= In the clamor surrounding AI ethics and safety are..AI Truth Ethics |636|
Launching a new pod Here are the first three episodes of the AI Truth Ethics..AI Journalism Truth |635|
Craig S. Smith used to write for WSJ and NYT, now he’s into AI. After..AI Tackles Yale/Stanford Junk Science |634|
AI stumbles on data analysis but eventually gets it right. Ready for another AI truth..AI Goes Head-to-head With Sam Harris on Free Will |633|
Flat Earth and no free will claims are compared. In Skeptiko 633, we ran another..AI Exposes Truth About NDEs |632|
AI head-to-head with Lex Fridman and Dr. Jeff Long over NDE science. In Skeptiko 632,..Convincing AI |631|
Mark Gober and I use AI to settle a scientific argument about viruses. In Skeptiko..Fake AI Techno-Religion |630|
Tim Garvin’s new book prompts an AI chat about spirituality. Multi-agent reinforcement learning and other..